


Mama Knows Best

by Yeah_JSmith



Series: Ruff Stuff [19]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Creeps Being Creepy, Ex-Grifter's Guide to Life, Family Bonding, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, POV Second Person, Ruth Wilde the Supermom, positivity, references to violence, wholesome relationship, why am i like this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 04:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18563911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeah_JSmith/pseuds/Yeah_JSmith
Summary: There is nothing rude about saying no, there is nothing bad about protecting yourself, there is nothing shameful about taking time to process, and it's okay to let others love you even when you don't love yourself.(In the wake of Kevin's abrupt departure from Judy's life, Ruth Wilde helps her get her head on straight.)





	Mama Knows Best

**Author's Note:**

> Reminder that Kevin was the rabbit Judy was trying to avoid when she asked Nick for his help. At this point, Judy's almost done with her last year of college, and she and Nick are together, but their dynamic is very new. They're still figuring themselves out. (And Nick isn't actually in this, which is why I didn't add him as a character.)
> 
> Content warnings are in the tags and also in prior RS stories. Please excuse the point of view, I've been kicking around an idea for an Interactive Fiction and couldn't get out of that mode.

The bizarre thing about this is that Kevin thinks of himself as a real-world Jack Savage, an action hero, a does’ buck, slick and sophisticated, but that’s not how you see the character at all, and now all those fanfics you wrote as a teenager are a point of shame — you used to think of yourself as a real-world Jack Savage, too. The only reason you bonded with him in the first place was your mutual nostalgia and a passing comment from you that you used to write for the fandom. That was it. You never expected him to see you as anything else but a fellow fan of a really niche comic and a study partner, and you never expected things to turn out like _this._

You can’t remember the last time you felt so exposed. Maybe never. It’s like the whole world can see you, like your front panel has broken off and everyone can see your inner cogs and gears and coils. You’re spilling your guts here in the park and any second now he’ll be back to feast on them. Your body is too small, or your head is too big, and you’re turning translucent, see-through, _disappearing—_

“I almost didn’t see you,” says Ruth from behind you, and you try and fail to make your face do something. You forgot to practice and you didn’t psych yourself up and now you’re just gazing blankly at Nick’s mother, and her face does the thing you hate where it looks like she knows your secrets. “You look like shit.” She frowns deeply, sniffing. “I smell blood.”

She sits down next to you on the park bench as your mind scrambles for words, any words at all that would make things make sense. Everything seems oversaturated, the red flowers a little too pink, the green grass a little too yellow, the chirping of the songbirds a little too shrill. You’re alone in the garden but you don’t feel alone, you feel like there are a thousand eyes on you, a million, a _billion,_ and you pull your arms into your chest, wishing for words. Nick would make a joke. Help you feel normal again. Ruth isn’t like her son in that way. You try to look her in the eyes, but they’re intense and she’s big and you’re not sure if you want to run and hide, or throw yourself into her arms and hide there instead.

That’s the worst part. You’re not a hider. You’re a doer, a seeker, a _trier._ But right now you feel like a lost little kit, or half a machine, or…

“Your face is bleeding,” she observes, and it’s not quiet, but it’s not loud, either. There’s no one else in the tiny community garden down the block from your apartment, but you still feel like looking around, making sure nobody else heard that. _You don’t want to be this mammal._ You just can’t figure out why you are.

“I…” Good. Words. If the stories are to be believed, Ruth Wilde used to be the queen of self-destructive behaviors, so maybe she won’t judge you. Maybe she has scars of her own. “I did it to myself.”

“Accidentally, or on purpose?”

“On purpose.”

She leans forward to examine your cheek, expression blank. Even her eyes are unreadable — not that you’d ever be able to get anything from her unless she wanted you to. Nick learned everything he knows about the art of the con from her, and she’s happy enough to be real with you most of the time, but not always. Gently, she takes your paw out of your lap and holds it up to her own; the size difference is always a little stunning to you, and the shape difference, too. She raises an eyebrow. “What’s the point of opening old wounds?”

It’s never easy to explain this. Nobody _gets_ it, even though it’s so simple to you, natural, necessary. What’s the difference between this, reopening Gideon’s claw marks to remind yourself to _not be that mammal anymore,_ and Nick’s requests that you spank him? Sure, he finds catharsis in being punished where you find resolve, but is that enough to differentiate between a bad punishment and a good one?

(That’s the reason you’ve been avoiding Nick since the incident, aside from one phone call where you couldn’t say anything. He’d be so disappointed to know what you’ve been doing. It’s just...for the last three days you’ve been freaking out in the mornings, almost unable to recognize yourself in the mirror, and the cutting _helps._ The scars make your _face_ real and you don’t look like some nightmare monster you accidentally summoned in the night.)

“Don’t feel like talking, hmm?” Ruth drops your paws and scritches between your ears instead, a dirty trick Nick must have mentioned. It doesn’t change anything, but it feels nice — so nice that it’s almost like an off-switch for the parts of your brain that are in charge of fretting. You decide to just lean into Ruth’s chest when she snakes her other arm around to your back; she’s so rarely this affectionate, and you feel better when you can burrow. She’s fluffy enough to simulate that. “Sometimes that’s all right. Sometimes not talking is better than lying.”

“I’m sorry,” you say, unable to say anything else, but it _is_ true. You’re sorry. You’re sorry for not being better, for not being stronger, for not being smarter, for not being _kinder._ In Bunnyburrow it was so easy to like being you, because you imagined living in Zootopia, the bright shining city full of mammals who shared your ideals. But it’s the same here, too, the same expectations, the same condescension, and it’s lonely and exhausting. You’d hate yourself if you _weren’t_ you, though, if you were the kind of bunny who just let Kevin do as he pleased because at least he never thought of you as a weirdo, a fake rabbit, just Jude the Dude trying to be more than she can be. Or should be.

It’s such a low bar, and you don’t understand why bunnies set the bar so low, and you hate that you think about your own species this way as though you aren’t one of them. You should be proud to be a bunny, but it isn’t a point of pride here. Kevin understands that. He just acted the way college guys act and you’re the rogue element, the wrench in the works, the aberration.

“I’m sorry,” you say again. You’re not even sure who you’re apologizing to.

“You don’t have to be untouchable, Judy,” says Ruth into your headfur, gently rocking side to side. It’s either a fox thing or a Wilde thing; you still don’t know the significance of it, but Nick does it too. Movement as comfort. It works, in any case, and your hearts stops pounding. “When you’re helpless-”

_“I’m not-”_

“Listen, please.” She stops her petting and brings her paw down to your jaw, forcing your head up. You don’t feel good about meeting her eyes, but you do anyway, defiant in the face of your own inadequacy. Nick has Ruth’s eyes, and it’s never been so _obvious_ to you before, but they have the same expression when they’re asking you to listen to something important and your _heart hurts_ and you don’t know why and you hate it, but you could never hate Ruth, so maybe you just hate yourself a little. You don’t know why. Everything just _hurts._ “I know this look all too well. You can’t control everything. And when you’re as trapped as you look right now, you don’t have to challenge the whole world to a fistfight, you only have to be strong enough to walk away. Tell me what happened.”

“I…” You shake your head. It’s hopeless. You’ve tried to tell Nick and you couldn’t even talk when he couldn’t see you. You’ve tried to tell Penny and you couldn’t even talk over tea. You even tried to tell a counselor, but you couldn’t force out the words, or any words at all, and you left feeling stupid and alone. You’ve been avoiding everyone lately, hiding on campus and using the navigation tricks Nick showed you; you’re still not sure how Ruth found you to begin with, how how she knew to look.

“Are you in immediate trouble?”

You shake your head again.

Her grip on your chin gets tighter; it’s not unpleasant, or painful, but she won’t let you look away, and _that_ hurts a little. “Did my son do something to you?”

_“No,”_ you say, more life in that one word than you’ve had in anything in the past few days. “That’s absurd.”

“Of course _I_ think so, I’m his mother, and I’ve always said he’s soft. But I had to ask. Is a classmate bothering you?” Your shoulders tense and Ruth’s expression darkens. “Did this classmate _hurt_ you?”

You freeze, wide-eyed, because you want to say yes and you want to say no and you’re not sure what the right answer is. Can you really say that Kevin hurt you when you stopped him? Is fear considered hurt? You’re fine. This pale ghost of a bunny isn’t _you,_ it’s just a glitch. You want to assure Ruth that nothing happened, that everything’s fine, but you don’t want to lie to her. She deserves better than that.

The part of your brain responsible for fear responses analyzes Ruth’s potential weaknesses. Her age is one. Her lack of physical training is another. You could just grab the webbing between her thumb and forefinger, press down until she can’t take the pain—

Another part of you takes note of all possible exits—

When she looks into you, there is no judgment. There is no expectation of strength. There is no expectation at all. You are safe with Ruth Wilde, and it makes you cry big, fat, heavy tears that burn your sinuses and hurt your temples.

“I didn’t know,” you tell her, words tumbling out at a stuttering pace that makes you feel sick and weak and useless like you promised yourself you never would be. “He was just some harmless creep. He wanted me and I didn’t want him and I thought it was enough to say that, I thought he would leave me alone when he met Nick, I thought _I’ve been wrong before,_ and I wanted — he followed me to the bridge — I hurt him, Mama. He wasn’t a fighter like me, he was just a dumb loser, and I hurt him.”

“Good,” she says, and it doesn’t assuage your guilt. You don’t want her to approve of your actions. You’re fairly sure you dislocated his shoulder, and _that was wrong —_ she has to see that!

“It’s not good,” you say miserably.

Ruth nods thoughtfully. Has she understood? “You’re right. You shouldn’t have let the little bastard go.”

Once again, you reiterate, “I hurt him.”

She snorts. Lets go of your chin. Pulls you in, holds your cheek against her breast. You never did this even with your own mother, the tired, comparatively calm doe who birthed 307 kits and raised 296 of them, but you always dreamed of this, of having the kind of mother from TV who had time to listen to your stupid little troubles. Somehow, you have it now: here you are with Ruth, sobbing into her nice blouse like a child.

And...it’s okay, because there isn’t a crying kit, there isn’t a mess to clean up, there isn’t a disaster or an injury or a time crunch. You don’t have to feel guilty about needing her attention because she doesn’t have a better place to spend it, or she’d be doing that instead.

“You don’t have to be nice to mammals who hurt you, Judy,” she murmurs into your ear. You shake against her, inside the curl of her arm, afraid that if she lets go you’ll run and never stop. “You don’t have to forgive them, either.”

“I want to. I don’t want to be mad. I don’t want to be hurt or sad when he was just doing something normal. How can I make the world a better place if I can’t even stop myself from using excessive force-”

“What made it excessive?”

You pause. There should be an immediate answer here, an intuitive one, but nothing comes to mind except dumb stuff, like “He barely even touched me,” which is only true because you stopped him, and “I should have tried harder to show him I wasn’t interested,” which _isn’t_ true because you made up an entire fake relationship to get him to back off, and “I really hurt him when I turned him down,” which is…

_Oh._

Everything about that is _wrong,_ isn’t it?

It’s normal to treat foxes like garbage, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay. It’s normal for only large mammals to be allowed in the ZPD, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay. And you know enough males that you’re not really sure Kevin’s behavior _is_ normal, it’s just that it’s tacitly condoned by media you’ve never liked and a culture of shame that you’ve never approved of. If Jack Savage is the gold standard for bunnies, Kevin should be smooth, professional, respectful — there’s a reason so many young does are into _Agent Savage_ comics, and it isn’t because magical realism is _just that compelling._ Out of everyone you know, the mammal most like your childhood hero is Nick.

If you turned Nick down, he wouldn’t snatch your arm and threaten you. Nick’s called you mean names before, but not as an attempt to lower your self-esteem to make you more open to him, just because Nick’s as mean to others as he is to himself sometimes. You know Nick wants you, likes you, probably even loves you, but he doesn’t act like he owns you. _Because_ he loves you. Nick is nothing like the male leads from the garbage romcoms that have always unsettled you, the possessive guys who are a half-step away from threatening and who would be a lot less popular with teen girls if they weren’t so attractive. Nick respects you enough to let you make your own decisions and trusts you not to betray him and you’ve literally had him _across your lap_ before. You’ve taken his own belt to his thighs and in some ways he’s the strongest, smartest, bravest mammal you’ve ever met. Kevin’s not Jack Savage, he’s the leading jerk in a romance you never signed up for. His bruised ego is his own problem, not yours.

He is not entitled to your time just because he wants it. That’s not how any of this is supposed to work.

“Nothing,” you say softly. “They say girls are supposed to be nice to the guys who like them. I never knew what it was like to be loved until now, and maybe I’m kidding myself about what I have with...but I know for a fact that _love_ isn’t what Kevin feels. I doubt he even likes me, he just likes the idea of being with someone who looks like me. He doesn’t want me, he wants to capture me. You don’t push someone you love. You don’t try to make them feel unsafe. You don’t try to tear them down and tell them what’s right for them, unless they ask you to.”

“You shouldn’t have to learn it this way,” Ruth tells you, but you hear approval in her voice and it unlocks something you can’t name, and you feel warm for the first time in days. “No one should. But take it from someone who made socializing into a profession: kindness is only one of many tools. You’re allowed to stop using it if it doesn’t serve you.”

“I just feel so _bad_ about it,” you admit. You pull away from her, not completely, just enough that you’re not speaking into her blouse. “You should have seen his face.”

“Right before he got angry, you mean,” she finishes for you — on point, as usual. You didn’t tell her about that, but she’s forgotten more about mammal behavior than you’ve learned.

“...Yeah. Before he got angry.”

She pats your shoulder and draws you in again, just against her side this time. It’s nice, because you can lean on her without feeling completely like a kit. “When I met John, he was just a piece in a con I was running. I used him to get me a meeting with the leader of a megachurch. Fleecer was the virgin preacher in public. In private, he used his position to coerce females into his bed. The plan was to sleep with him, record it, and demand money in exchange for his silence.”

“Wow,” you say, trying not to show the depth of your surprise. Nick’s hustles are victimless, more or less. He’d never even consider extortion. He’s still a little squeamish about sex. You knew Ruth was, well, _ruthless,_ but you never quite got it because you still see her as Nick’s mother, not an ex-grifter.

“I’d done it a hundred times before. But that time I lost my nerve. To this day I don’t know if it was because I was falling for John or because I despise males who act like they’re entitled to take whatever they want from me, but I told him I wanted to stop, and he didn’t want to let me. I had to threaten him with violence just to get him to let me leave the _room.”_ Ruth pats your arm again and rocks a little, and maybe this time it’s not just for your benefit, so you don’t feel patronized. “I don’t regret it, Judy. I don’t regret putting my claws to his wrist. I don’t regret using my status as a predator to scare him. I did what I had to do to keep myself safe. Do you think I should feel bad about it?”

“No, of course not.”

This time, she pulls away, and when she faces you, it feels like you’re being x-rayed, and your shoulders go up like you can somehow hide away in them if you try hard enough but it doesn’t work. She shakes her head and runs her thumb over your scars, and only a small bead of blood comes off, from the little dip where you accidentally went a little too deep, but it’s enough to make you feel awful. You never wanted to get your problems on someone else, but here she is with your blood on her paw. That she wipes it off right away on a tissue from her purse does not erase it. “You remind me of him, you know. He was an idealist, too. Even though he usually let everyone walk all over him, he never really believed what anyone said about foxes, and sometimes he’d come home bruised and bloody because the pressure built up too much and had to go get himself beaten up in underground prize matches. He wasn’t a masochist, he just liked the adrenaline rush. It was terrifying, loving him, because I knew he cared about us, but I never knew if he’d piss off the wrong mammal and one day just...not come home. The kinder he was to the mammals that hurt him, the more he went out fighting. I can’t prove that it got him killed, but…”

She lets it hang. You look down, ashamed of yourself, guilty about the way you’ve handled this. You’ve been hurting Nick and Penny and your other friends by avoiding them. You’ve been hurting yourself to stop the anger, just like Nick’s dad. “I didn’t mean to...that wasn’t the intent.”

“Of course not. It’s never the intent. You’re not stupid, you’re young. We were, too — far too young to have a child. John was only a year older than you. I was two years older than him. It’s not your fault that you were hurt. But hurting yourself just so you can better pretend you deserved it _doesn’t work.”_

Is that really it?

...Maybe it is.

“I never looked at it like that.” You take a deep breath and let it out, trying to push all the hot guilt and fear out too. You’ve never feared failure, but coming from traditional bunny culture, you do sometimes fear that the price of success will be loneliness, and you trust Nick to stay with you for as long as he likes you but you don’t really trust yourself to stay as likeable as he finds you now. You’re familiar with the siren song of your own ambition. And that’s the root of this, isn’t it? It’s not that you want to be kinder. It’s that you don’t want to be as unkind as you know you’re capable of.

But Kevin had a choice, too, and he made the wrong one. You made the choice to defend yourself, and it was the right one, wasn’t it?

“Thank you,” you say. You’re already feeling better. Three days of isolating helped less than one conversation with someone who knew what she was talking about, and you know that talking to Nick wouldn’t have ended this way, because he _does_ love you, but Ruth _gets_ you. She speaks your language. And she was right. Your summation of her lecture sounds a bit awkward to your ears, but it tastes good in your mouth. “I didn’t mess up. It’s just that sometimes social expectations are messed up, and I don’t really fit in.”

“Exactly. I always knew you were smart. I have to get going now, but I’m glad we had this chat.” Ruth grins and stands and brushes her skirt down her legs. “Now go find my son, he’s been driving me _up the wall_ with his fretting. _How can I help? Should I bring her flowers? Do bunnies like flowers? No, she’d probably like something practical. Should I get her a utility knife?_ Honestly.”

You aren’t sure whether to feel guilty or flattered, but you’ve had enough of feeling guilty, so you force a smile and reply, “Maybe I should stop letting him take care of me, but it makes him happy.”

“You don’t have to tell him, you know.” She looks at you pointedly as she cuts to the heart of your final insecurity, ignoring your half-joke like you never said it at all. “If it hurts too much, just tell him you need a while to process. That way he’ll know you’re not hiding anything from him, you’re just sorting through your thoughts, and he won’t make some grand gesture that will embarrass you both.”

You cock your head and fail to picture what kind of grand gesture Nick could possibly make. “Why do you think he’d do that?”

“Because he’s my son,” she says dryly, “and despite his best efforts, he turned out like me. He’s just more up-front about his awfulizing. I like you, Judy, and I’m giving you this advice because I want you to stay in the family. All right? Just let him know you need some time, that it has nothing to do with him, and he’ll believe you, because he’s not stupid either. And I promise you that when you’re ready to talk about it, he’ll listen.”

“I think you’re right,” you say, and you jump off the bench as well.

“If I’m wrong, then he’s not my son,” she says. She turns her back to you and walks toward the gate, clearly done with the conversation. You believe her, no matter which way that statement can be taken — and it’s nice to have a mother on your side. Maybe you won’t always feel great, but clearly she knows how to remind you that you are Judy Hopps, and you don’t let stupid assumptions stand in your way, and you don’t let stupid mammals get you down. _You can do anything._

You don’t have to fear ending up alone, because you won’t. You have a family, and that means more than words can say.

**Author's Note:**

> Surprising no one, I wrote my feelings after an incident. I was angry. Now I feel better.


End file.
